Volodymyr Zelenskiy on April 3 rolled out a list of demands for President Petro Poroshenko to fulfill before the end of his term, including scrapping e-declarations for civil activists and revamping judicial reform.
Comedic actor Zelenskiy, who won the first round of the presidential election on March 31 with 30.24 percent of the vote, will face Poroshenko, who came second in the vote with 15.95 percent, in a runoff election on April 21.
After the early results of the national exit poll came in on the evening of March 31, and it became clear that Poroshenko was set to lose the first round to an actor without political experience, the president addressed Ukrainians under 30 — those, he said, whom he had not managed to convince in the first round, and who were Zelenskiy’s main voter base.
“I fully understand what is behind your discontent. I have heard you, and now please hear me,” he said, speaking at his campaign headquarters.
“You see the changes in the country but want them to be more profound and faster. I fully agree. We have to unite and not waste time to achieve those quality changes,” he said. “Everything we have done over five years is, largely speaking, for the youth, for the future of Ukraine.”
The Zelenskiy team hit back on April 3, releasing a list of nine demands for Poroshenko and his majority parliamentary faction that they could still do before the end of his term. They were:
- Adopt a law canceling the obligatory e-declaration of assets and income for civil activists;
A law obliging anti-corruption non-governmental organizations and activists to file electronic declarations of assets and income, similar to those that public officials have to file, was adopted in 2017. Despite pressure from Western partners, the Ukrainian parliament voted against its cancellation last year.
- Restart the National Agency for Corruption Prevention as a new body, with the participation of international experts and external auditing;
The National Agency for Corruption Prevention has been criticized for poor performance in verifying the electronic declarations of public officials. The agency has glossed over the illegal enrichment of many of those in power. However, it did cancel a Hr 500 ($18) bonus awarded to Yulia Marushevska, the former head of Odesa Customs office, after her boss – former Odesa Governor Mikhail Saakashvili – fell out with Poroshenko.
In addition, two whistleblowers claimed that the agency itself was marred by large-scale corruption and was completely controlled by the Presidential Administration.
- Adopt an electoral law for the introduction of a proportional, open-list voting system at the next parliamentary elections;
The new Electoral Code suggests making the list of candidates from political parties open to voters. That means that Ukrainians will vote not for a political party or its leader, but actually see who will represent them in the legislature. It will also remove the opportunity to buy a place on the list.
- Appoint judges and launch a functioning High Anti-Corruption Court;
Under pressure from the International Monetary Fund, Ukraine passed a law on the establishment of the Anti-Corruption Court in June 2018. After a lengthy selection process, the High Qualification Commission of Judges nominated 39 judges, but President Poroshenko has not signed off on their appointments yet.
- Revoke his draft bill on illegal enrichment and order the parliamentary coalition (Petro Poroshenko Bloc and People’s Front) to support a draft law drawn up in cooperation with international experts;
In late February, Constitutional Court abolished criminal responsibility under the illegal enrichment law. Simultaneously, President Poroshenko filed a draft bill to replace the Criminal Code article that had been struck down. But experts found it questionable.
- Remove from the Security Service of Ukraine, the National Police, and other law enforcement agencies powers for combating economic crimes and to stop them from putting pressure on business;
- Dismiss Serhiy Semochko, the first deputy head of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine;
Semochko has been under investigation for possible illegal enrichment after journalists exposed his family’s luxury property, lavish lifestyle, and the fact that some of his relatives held dual Ukrainian and Russian citizenship.
- Cancel the Rotterdam Plus scheme and start an external independent audit of the National Commission for State Regulation of Energy and Public Utilities;
After Russia occupied parts of the Donbas in eastern Ukraine, Ukraine lost access to many of its coal mines and had to switch to importing coal from South Africa and South America. The imported coal goes through the Dutch port of Rotterdam.
Rotterdam Plus is a formula that allows coal-fired power plants to include the cost of coal in the Netherlands and the cost of its shipment to Ukraine in the tariff for electricity.
The scheme is believed to have been invented by President Poroshenko and oligarch Rinat Akhmetov, whose DTEK company benefit the most from higher tariffs on electricity. Moreover, journalists and experts have pointed that some of the coal actually comes from the occupied Ukrainian territories, but is being sold as a high quality, imported fuel.
- Publish a list of his offshore companies and the banks in which those companies hold accounts, as well as their financial reports over the last five years.
In 2016, the Panama Papers leak revealed that Poroshenko had set up a company called Prime Asset Partners in the British Virgin Islands in 2014, shortly after being elected as president, for what looked like the purpose of tax minimization. The 2018 Paradise Papers leak added more evidence to the suspicions. There was also evidence of an unexplained 4-million-euro transaction in Cyprus by Poroshenko’s companies.
No reaction
Poroshenko’s campaign office has not responded to the demands.
But one lawmaker with the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko, Iryna Herashchenko, has reacted to one of the demands – canceling obligatory e-declarations of assets by civil activists.
“I would like to remind (Zelenskiy’s) team that it’s the Verkhovna Rada that adopts changes to laws, not the president,” she wrote on Facebook. “President Poroshenko one-and-a-half years ago submitted a motion to the parliament to cancel e-declarations for activists. An alternative draft bill was submitted by Yulia Tymoshenko. The parliament voted them down. I don’t want to upset you, (Zelenskiy) team, but the same situation happened with the draft law on elections at first reading.”
